For many years now, I’ve been coaching my public speaking clients to act as if they felt confident by embodying that feeling through how they sit, stand and walk. These simple techniques serve to “trick” the mind into feeling comfortable and confidence while speaking. Recently I watched a TED talk by social psychologist Amy Cuddy More…
Category: Public Speaking Presence
Closing the Presence Gap: Simple tools for rediscovering this innate leadership ability
(The three people described below are each composites of a number of clients who have come through my public speaking programs and services.) Jane was bright, experienced, and the only female on her work team. Frustrated, she felt that nothing she said at team meetings was taken seriously and her participation was frequently discounted or More…
From Uptight to Calm and Relaxed
I was at the dentist yesterday. Nothing major, just getting my teeth cleaned. As I was lying there on the chair I became aware of how “uptight” my body was. It seemed that despite the relative safety of the event, my muscles were preparing to fight or flee. It was as though at a deeply More…
Absence: The Number One Obstacle to Presence
(Original article copyrighted in 2008) I was at a team meeting recently where a group of us were talking about the leadership training program in an organization employing about 275 people. One person in the group asked the CEO, “What’s the opposite of leadership?” The CEO without any hesitation immediately said, “Absence!” How interesting! I More…
Think of it as a conversation
Over the course of the last several months, I’ve made an important decision about how I present my work and where I focus my attention. For more than 10 years I’ve been a Public Speaking Presence Coach through my company, formerly named RiverWays Enterprises. I love working with individual clients in private coaching sessions because our More…
Beginner’s Mind
I don’t know if I’m getting older and feeling my age, if my chronic injuries need special attention, or if part of me is just getting “lazy”, but lately, after 20 years of practicing yoga (with a 5 year stint as a teacher), I increasingly find myself drawn to beginner yoga classes. In these “easy” More…
The first ingredient of rapport is full attention
I was listening to an interview today with Daniel Goleman, who, having previously introduced the concept of Emotional Intelligence, is now talking about Social Intelligence. His current work is looking at how the brain is wired to create connection. The sentence that drew me into the interview today was, “The first ingredient of rapport is More…
Returning to the familiar
Having just returned from a holiday visit with family, I’m well aware of how unsettling it can be to break out of the routines that are part of the normal patterns of our day-to-day life. To help manage these kinds of disruptions, my yoga teacher this morning reminded us of the benefits of returning to More…
Leadership lessons learned from two weeks of dance improv
I’ve just finished an extraordinary two week “Make a Show” dance intensive with two choreographers, Matt Kent and Renee Jaworski, from the Pilobolus dance company. (This event was sponsored by the Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College and the Lebanon Recreation & Parks Department.) Essentially, 20 of us (an interesting amalgam of movers and non-movers with an More…
Authentic presence… What is it really?
After having had the pleasure of being in the presence of a number of “masters” in the last couple of weeks, I’m deeply immersed in this inquiry. What is authentic presence really? Here are some examples of presence that I’ve experience: I attended a facilitated gathering of folks recently where the lead person demonstrated a More…